Beijing Olympics dream team to take on Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park

The Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei will again team up with Herzog &
de Meuron, the architect duo behind the Tate Modern, for the 2012 summer
Serpentine Pavilion.

Ai WeiWei, the artist and Chinese dissidentPhoto: REUTERS

By Florence Waters

12:28PM GMT 07 Feb 2012

Each year a world-renowned architect is invited to erect a daring temporary building in London's Hyde Park, with this year's designers promising to be the bravest yet.

The architects behind the 2008 Beijing Olympics' "Bird's Nest" stadium, Herzog & de Meuron, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who was the artistic consultant on the stadium will be in charge of this year's design, the Serpentine Gallery announced today.

Not only will the team inevitably echo features of - or, at the very least, invite comparisons to - the design of the $500-million Olympic stadium in Beijing, which went on to win the prestigious RIBA Lubetkin Prize, but they have also announced that for the first year ever, the gallery will allow the designers to take the pavilion underground.

Visitors will be invited to go beneath the Serpentine’s lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous Pavilions. Eleven columns characterising each past Pavilion and a twelfth column will support a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground.

Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

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Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery, said: “We are delighted that our annual commission will bring this unique architectural collaboration to Europe to mark the continuity between the Beijing 2008 and the London 2012 Games.

“Our path to an alternative solution involves digging down some five feet into the soil of the park until we reach the groundwater. There we dig a waterhole, a kind of well, to collect all of the London rain that falls in the area of the Pavilion. In that way we incorporate an otherwise invisible aspect of reality in the park – the water under the ground – into our Pavilion.

“The roof resembles that of an archaeological site. It floats some five feet above the grass of the park, so that everyone visiting can see the water on it, its surface reflecting the infinitely varied, atmospheric skies of London.”

In October Art Review magazine named Ai Weiwei the most powerful figure in the art world. The outspoken critic of China's human rights record spent more than two months in detention last summer.

The Pavilion will be Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei’s first collaborative built structure in the UK. Previous architects who have been invited to take part in the commission include Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind with Arup, and Jean Nouvel.

Alongside the Pavilion this summer, the Serpentine Gallery will host a major exhibition of the work of Yoko Ono.